There's a completely different take; Civic resilience

From an operational and strategic security POV, cash is a vastly superior technology. It doesn't need electricity, a network of cables, satellites and routers.

Therefore cash in circulation acts as a buffer that provides economic stability and continuity of operations.

Also, take a look at a modern European bank note, like we have in the UK. It's a sophisticated technology. It's not like we still have Roman coins that any blacksmith can forge.

There are many good, but more subtle reasons for preserving the use of cash, and regulating business practices if necessary to do so.

If the power goes out, I can't get any cash. I don't keep any meaningful amount cash on hand and neither does anyone I know, including my elderly relatives. Most of the stores I shop at won't actually be able to sell me anything, because none of the products have price tags and I sincerely doubt that any of their staff are trained to revert to pen-and-paper accounting. Even if they did manage to keep things running, they'd likely run out of change by the end of the day. The grocery stores are JIT and have no more than a few days of stock of anything; again, I doubt there's a manual backup to their reordering system.

Maybe things are different in countries with less reliable infrastructure, but I just can't think of a scenario in which cash would gain you any appreciable amount of resilience without much wider systemic changes. So much other stuff beyond payments is wholly reliant on technology. I'm not sure that would be a wise investment versus improving the resilience of power distribution and network infrastructure.

Well, that is well on your single data point, here is mine: I live in a bad weather prone area of the united states. I do not know _anyone_ that does _not_ have a meaningful amount of cash in the house for bad weather. Yes, stores here operate with low/no power or communications and use cash. I agree with the poster who noted that it provides a localized resilience. It is your fault, not anyone else's, that you do not have some currency.

Truth be told, I have kept about a weeks worth of spending in cash for decades in the house, just in case, and I have indeed had to use it during long term power outages. Heck, in my area just last week, all of my banks ATMs were down for the entire week due to a software issue after an upgrade (I am not making this up). While I might not have needed cash, it shows the fragility of our systems we rely on.

At least he had his canned fish. I gave him some candles.

Another side effect of this DC rule will be to ensure that more are prepared too.

Weirdly enough, replacing my Chase debit card is so much easier with an Apple Wallet because it instantly gets a new card number while I wait three or four days for a card to show up in the mail. I can tap to pay in the interim and it's so much less of a pain in the ass in the interim.

Also funny is losing your id card/passport and your bank card/credit card simultaneously. You then need to get a new card from your bank that requires a valid id and you need to get a new id card which costs money. And no driving! "Gladly" this process takes so much time you can usually borrow money or pay it for you.

Plurality of payment methods is always more desirable and more robust. If one is serious about business, why would you not take, cash, cheque, credit and debit cards, contactless, NFT phone, and bitcoin? Even if some of those are suboptimal, a sale is a sale.

The ability to negotiate and adapt is what makes the world go round.

One example; I was caught in an emergency needing to get a taxi to an airport. On the way I explained the situation to the driver, and ended up negotiating the fare as a mix of US dollars, Danish Kroners, and a good bottle of wine, where the official expected currency was Euros.

The problem comes with cashiers and managers who are not business owners and are terrified to do anything unusual. They are tied to procedural rote and unable to think dynamically. It's all about what they can't do even when evidently agreeable and favourable options are on the table.

For some businesses, the overall cost of accepting some of those methods may be higher than the expected revenue from customers who won't use another method. Buying new payment readers. Having to convert the bitcoin immediately to currency to avoid losing money due to its constant price fluctuations. Higher per-transaction fees for some types of payment. Increased susceptibility to fraud (for cheques in particular).

> The problem comes with cashiers and managers who are not business owners and are terrified to do anything unusual. They are tied to procedural rote and unable to think dynamically.

You would be too if you were barely making ends meet, the expected outcome for "a customer asked me to accept an unusual form of payment" was almost always "it was a con, the 'customer' got the merchandise/service for free", and you'd most likely be fired as a result.

Just the millionth example of why trust is a critical component in society. Its presence allows things to be flexible and efficient. Lack of it makes things suck for everyone.

It wasn't that they couldn't think about creative solutions, it's that we generally didn't want them to. There were serious implications for wrong decisions. For example, we couldn't sell a product for less than wholesale. The staff had no idea what the markup was and so couldn't know if a discount was above or below wholesale. If a product was sole for less than wholesale, the owner could have lost his license.

The wildest we got was when the computers crapped out. I told the staff to write down every transaction. Each transaction included the cost of the item, bottle deposit, and tax. On a Friday/Saturday night, we knew the top 10 item totals by heart and we were also good at counting back change.

When I was a regular run of the mill staffer at the store, I was happy to stay in my lane. The expectations were clear and that was good for everyone even if we, or customers, were sometimes inconvenienced.

Well, all other significant concerns aside, NFTs are not fungible, it is literally in the name. Transactions are made through fungible methods.

Example: a $10 bill is exactly the same as any other $10 other bill or the same as having a $10 in your bank account. Same applies to BTC, any bitcoin is an equivalent of any other BTC.

This fungibility is what gives them the baseline feasibility as a common transaction method. Fungibility is just one of the many requirements for something to be useful as a common transaction vehicle, but it is one of the most fundamental ones, and if it isn’t satisfied, the rest of it doesn’t really matter. Sure, BTC is too volatile to be useful for transaction purposes in a lot of cases, but volatility is further up the chain of concerns, and BTC indeed satisfies the fungibility requirement. Sure, common AAPL shares are fungible as well, there is exactly zero difference between shares of AAPL that you can buy and the ones i can buy, but they aren’t fit as a common transaction method for many other reasons too.

Meanwhile, any given NFT is not an equivalent to any other NFT. They are explicitly intended to be unique and non-fungible/non-replaceable. There is no price for 1 NFT, just like there is no price for 1 painting, each NFT and painting is their own non-fungible entity. So everything else aside, NFTs are explicitly and by their definition are hard-disqualified to be a common transaction medium on the very fundamental level. In contrast, BTC doesn’t have such fundamental problems, but more in terms of practical problems (transaction speeds, transaction costs, high volatility, etc.)

I also was in your similar example. In US I have a car, so very rarely I use public transport which is not Bart. I landed in Toronto at 2am, got into Bus Google Maps told me, Bus driver said $2.50 fare, cash only. I gave him American 3 dollars, and he gave me Canadian $0.50 change back.

Now that many cards no longer use raised numbers I expect such mechanisms wouldn’t work as well.

They said their payment terminals were down so they could not take credit cards. I said oh... I don't have any cash, oh well no coffee for me. They said well... we can comp you one drink per person if you don't have cash.

Neither I nor they considered the option of me walking over to the nearby bank ATM and withdrawing cash.

That's your choice, not a problem with cash

> Most of the stores I shop at won't actually be able to sell me anything

But many other stores will

> ... by the end of the day

Often, it is all that is needed

Not all outages are apocalypse scenarios. Sometimes, it is just about finding something to eat for the night, the kind of small things that add up in an emergency situation.

Take the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami for instance, it caused big problems like flooded cities and the Fukushima disaster, but it also caused small problems for millions of people, power outages, stopped trains, etc... These people had to eat, sleep,... while most of the infrastructure was down, it got better the next day, but in the meantime, it is good not to have to worry about millions of people being able to buy their meal when thousands are in need for immediate assistance.

IMO you need the cash more to make the first day or two easier, or if there is a card payment outage as happened last year here in Canada,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Rogers_Communications_o...

Maybe my experiences are atypical, but my impression is that consumer banking in the US is quite dysfunctional.

And, as others note, CC readers in an individual store do go down though I probably won't have much cash in my pocket even if I have some at home.

> It seems pretty useless for spending on supplies and food if you ask me.

Seem pretty useful to me. At least historically, you can generally exchange gold for goods even in a total disaster scenario. You won't be weighing anything out or getting change, of course. You'll be seriously overpaying by the standards of a functioning economy. But nonetheless, you'll be able to engage in enough commerce to help you survive.

That said, I don't keep gold around. I do keep cash -- but if things have devolved to the point where cash isn't useful, then I'll have much larger problems than figuring out how to buy stuff.

You could carry some Goldbacks: https://www.goldback.com/

I think South Africa has had power problems in recent years, might be good to look at how they've dealt with it?

In Hungary currently it is mandatory to use networked cash registers for cash transactions and centralized digital reporting system for issuing invoices. There are some minor exemptions, for farmer's markets and some similar specific niche very low volume cash transactions.

I know about no disaster protocols. (though the Hungarian mindset wouldn't give a damn about law forbidding sales without digital invoice in case of a slightly sustained emergency situation, possibly an outage longer than a day.)

So basically even with cash you might need electricity. (until nobody starts to give a damn)

I support using cash, for the several reasons outlined in the comments and the article. Yet I think when the trust in government/public services starts to break down (as ignoring laws banning non digitally accounted transactions), the trust in cash might also start to break down (though it takes longer imo)

Something that I've learned when I worked with those devices in the past is that the tax authorities do have strong contingency plans.

I don't know about the implementation details of the system, it is working since about 8-10 years ago without any major noteworthy issue/outage apart from some minor hiccups in the initial deployment. It sounds logical that some similar disconnected operation should be available here as well.

Put another way, it's always a good idea to avoid hard dependency on a working Internet connection whenever possible. Be it your "smart" toaster, or your payment methods.

There are a lot of scenarios where having cash as a fallback is great.

Experience has shown an even more prosperous outlook from having cash as the mainstay and credit as a fallback.

You present that as a fact, but it is far from. The jury is still out. And I would also question whether this is a case where "average" is even the relevant metric - is it ok if a chunk of the population looses access to shopping, because VISA or MASTERCARD decided do cut off their access? Cash is controlled by the state, but digital payment systems are not, and unlike cash, do not ensure equal treatment.

And partial function is better than no function.

I disagree with this. There are great advantages to having a cashless option, but I see no real advantages that are greater than the disadvantages to having a cashless society. What are they?

So yes, a bulletproof cage is security technology, it works sufficiently well most of the time, there aren't many low-effort innovations to break it (bombs and such have been around forever but aren't used to rob convenience stores often), and if it does get broken it's obvious. Whereas a software exploits can be harder to detect and can be much easier to replicate and scale

Edit - Innovations in physical theft: That Kia/Hyundai car trend, which is really software. The trick bums use to steal blue bikes from docks. Writing threatening notes to bank tellers without any way of making good on the threat because tellers are directed to not fight back. Any more examples?

(And to add a cherry on top, this is usually not disturbing to actual customers, because they're busy doing usual bullshit paperwork while the safe is unlocking.)

You can have all the tech for proving that a dollar is legit, but it nobody cares if the dollar is legit, then it doesn't matter

This is about money being able to function with crippled infrastructure, not about someone stealing dollars stashed inside a mattress.

and it's superior because it usually cannot be circumvented with math or will accumulate known insecurities over time.

Back in 2018, Visa's network crashed:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2018/jun/01/visa-outa...

It was absolute chaos. Most shops and restaurants lost a ton of business due to customers not being able to pay for products (many people here don't have cash in their wallets at all), and many of them couldn't sell even if they wanted to, since the card reader (and other parts of their point of sale systems) also relied on said network.

Having cash as an option at least means things won't completely shut down whenever this sort of error occurs.

It is vulnerable to counterfeiting which mean citizens lose out regularly as they don't have the means to check all cash is valid as shops or banks do.

Physically it is vulnerable to destruction and cannot be replaced if burned for example, unlike a bank card or other token of identity linking you to your funds.

It is vulnerable to devaluation (in has this in common with electronic cash)

In the event of societal collapse or degradation it becomes worthless fairly quickly, which is the opposite of resilient.

Cash is not at all resilient compared to electronic money therefore, and people are voting with their feet to get rid of it, laws like this will just delay the inevitable for a decade or so.

Bank cards will also disappear pretty quickly IMO (next couple of decades), as they're just a physical token of ownership and not really required if you can rely on say a combination of biometrics to assert identity.

But nowadays cash is hard currency, while electronic payments are fiat currency, or like NFTs.

I think of this after all the stories about paypal/square/etc withholding payments and destroying an individual or a business.

To be fair, credit cards also don't. At least didn't need to, up until very recently, when most issuers stopped embossing their credit cards.

Imprinters exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_imprinter

Sure, the risk here is that the charge would get declined later on, but you get the same risk if you accept personal checks.

So in some scenario where electricity is unavailable, credit cards will be just as worthless in most cases as apps and gift cards.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You have no idea what I do or do not understand, and my comment provides additional context which makes it pretty clear in what context I'm using the word "understand."

I don't expect any store anywhere to have an imprinter, but it's definitely an option.

Card present or online transactions only prevents you as a seller to make any money when the internet is not working.

But I am somewhat curious as to why nobody in my experience has implemented this on ground. Because if the customer pays with an actual credit card, the risk that the transaction won't go through when the internet comes back up is near-0, provided the card is valid. It is theoretically (and I assume practically too, given that every credit card agreement I've ever signed--and it's a lot of agreements, considering I was churning a lot for airline points--specifically outlined extra fees for "overcharging" your account) possible to overcharge the account this way (i.e. the transaction would still go through even if it'd blast past your credit limit, up to some limit though, probably)

You need trusted cashiers, need to check every received note to see if it's genuine, then you need to safely deposit that somewhere, the boxes of cash have to be transported likely in an armored truck.

And you still need communications networks for all the checks and balances and automated systems to handle the cash.

It's a massive logistic effort to shuffle around little certificates of value.

No but dollar bills are a lot less advanced. They're also all still the same size and color so it's very hard to differentiate them.

For me the privacy point is the most important though.

Deloitte calculate the per day impact of a temporary shutdown would be on average $23.6 million per 10 million population. Not that bad actually. But that figure seems based on the immediate hourly estimate from places like The Uptime Institute and LSE. Other estimates puts it at between $11Bn per day for the whole USA [0] and only $10Bn for the whole year [1]. In reality the impact quickly compounds, making day 2 (24-48 hours) significant worse, and so on [2]. I am quite sure the aggregate downtime of AWS, Azure, Google and other cloud services in the past year has exceeded 24 hours per capita civilian use.

Being able to take cash, as a "flywheel", makes or breaks businesses in those times.

[0] https://bnn.network/finance-nav/unraveling-the-impact-of-glo...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/internet-shutdow...

[2] According to studies I got masters students at York Business School to undertake.

edit: formatting

That seems very low, surely the transaction volume of the average person is more than $2.36 a day?

But most businesses do. The main issue is there: why should a business be forced by law to accept cash if they absolutely need electricty and cables to work as a business ?

It's one step below forcing them to accept hand written checks. Those are also extremely resilient, you just need a pen and paper. But god no I wouldn't want to deal with them at a car rental desk.

Sure cash should be accepted in shops selling essential goods. But other shops should have the choice.

* Elderly people who struggle with technology.

* People fleeing coercive situations like domestic abuse where their abuser controls their finances.

* People with mental disabilities, for whom cash might be the only thing they know how to use.

* Homeless people, who might literally rely on cash to survive.

* Poorer people who prefer cash because it helps them budget and limit their spending.

* People so poor or otherwise disadvantaged that they don't even have a bank account.

That last group is much bigger than you think: by one estimate, 6% of American adults don't have a bank account and another 13% are "underbanked".[0] That's tens of millions of people in the US alone who don't have access to the basic financial services that you and I take for granted.

I have no idea how they do it. I'm not sure how it's even possible to navigate modern life without a bank account, but then I'm an educated, affluent professional who has no idea what it's like to be poor. Just because I don't need cash doesn't mean that no-one else does.

So basically, I think that asking "why should a business be forced by law to accept cash?" is like asking "why should a business be forced by law to provide wheelchair ramps and elevators?" If you don't think the answer is obvious, then you need to check your privilege.

[0] Source: https://usafacts.org/articles/who-is-the-least-likely-to-hav...

> Sure cash should be accepted in shops selling essential goods. But other shops should have the choice.

That basically covers you whole list, except if your argument is that gaming PC parts shop should absolutely accomodate cash in case homeless people need an RTX3060 over the weekend.

Also fundamdentally a bank account should be a legal right (it is in many countries, if it's not in yours it's a more critical debate than cash), and with it should come a debit card. Sure some people won't be able to use it for a reason or another, but they can get help. The same way not everyone benefits from cash.

Check cashing stores. And you pay a very steep fee for not having a bank account.

My partners mum fits the bill of "underbanked". She lives in an area where cash is king (near the border of a country that uses a different currency). She has a bank account, but doesn't use her debit card or online banking.

The answer to "how it's possible" is that she relies on other people who do have bank accounts to do things that require online payments.

If you don’t think the answer is the federal government should be providing the necessary infrastructure, then you want retail business operators to pay for fixing the problems taxpayers should be paying to fix.

It is a tried and true tactic for politicians to be able to claim they did something, but also keep taxes low. It really screws the smallest and poorest businesses/communities.

IDEA 2004 - Feds mandate each and every kid get an “individual education plan” and make it very hard and expensive for school leaders to expel kids who cause problems. And of course, Feds provide no money.

So what happens? Poorer towns with insufficient resources for paraeducators to manage problematic kids just let the kids stay in class and cause disruptions. Poorer students who want to learn get punished.

Richer areas that can afford complying with all regulations are even better off than before, except their residents get lower taxes and their leaders get to say they did something to help people.

Legislating a minimum standard is easy and cheap. Funding it and executing it is expensive, so everyone tries to avoid it.

Ummm, for quite small values of "most" :)

I have a handle on this because I set a resilience assignment to a cohort of about 20 MBAs at a business school. Specifically I asked for a representative range of businesses;

- fast food - gymnasiums and sports - nail bars and hairdressers - auto-repair and mechanic/garages - child and day-care

.... you get the picture, _loads_ of variety.

They did 1 hour, 12 hour, 24 hour and one week case models.

As tech people, we are probably biased to think too heavily about digital and electronic systems. Many businesses can function in "survival mode" during a tech outage, including electricity in some cases.

As I recall, after "telephone", it was payment systems that were the real killer. Interestingly many access control systems fail-safe simply locking everyone out of the buildings!

"survival mode" is just that, you can accept cash during a hurricane, and refuse it for the rest of the year when you operate nromally.

That said, I can also understand businesses wanting to do away with it - no need to dealt with it; secure it, count it, deposit it, … etc.

Asking these people to handle cash instead feels like an undue burden on something that is a very selective side gig. I've seen this a lot in mildly remote locations, and I'd assume they wouldn't be doing it if it was more of a burden, like having to deal with the cash flow.

Forcing all businesses to follow a model that is already getting phased out doesn't make sense.

tax office has very little similarity with a retail store, idk what you are advocating here.

When I asked for a Clubcard a few months ago they said they're not giving out any and you have to use the app.

Funny enough just after I asked I found one on the floor; I'm using that one.

I wouldn't go to Tesco if it wasn't for that, because the price differences are just insane. Before you had the points and whatnot but not the strong discounts (IIRC), then I didn't go to Tesco for a few years on account of being in a different country, and now it's a €3 "regular price" and "€1.50 club card price" for half the stuff I buy. wtf?!

Handy enough. I get to avoid jacked-up prices, and he gets reward points.

212-867-5309. Replace area code with one near your location.

At least in the US.

Also, if this counts as social media, this is the only one I use, because I don't want to give any information away about myself within my control. So given the option of mask/fedora/sunglasses or nothing, I'd take the former.

If you see someone passed out in a fedora/sunglasses/mask outside, it may be me or someone like me who just got really dizzy because of a lack of oxygen.

On the breathing thing, I am quite tall and have a large lung capacity, I've always wondered if that had anything to do with my mask struggles.

I guess my point is, masks aren't a political thing for everyone, just the loud ones.

But cash handling costs a substantial amount too. We should probably all be paying by debit card and charging extra for cash or credit card.

That said, a middleman that takes a smaller fee is still much better for the economy than a middleman that takes in an oversized fee and then magnanimously hands back a chunk of it.

Especially when that middleman is a worldwide oligopoly with far too much power. I try to use local e-payment systems whenever possible.

Which, societally, is a good thing. Credit card rewards programmes are a tax on everyone that disproportionately affects the lowest earners who aren't availing of cashback.

If they charge 100% on everyones transactions then my delux diamond card (sorry you dont qualify) can give me 200% cashback and everyone else can go f' themselves.

Ahh the land of the free

On a €600 laptop or desktop we'd earn maybe €50 to €75. The €12 is a comparatively large fraction of that. We didn't actually make that much more money from more expensive laptops, so for a €1,000 model we'd typically also earn €50 to €75, and with €20 of that going to Visa... yeah. After factoring in costs for sales, warranty, rant of the store, etc. there is not much left.

On one hand you can say "well, it's only €20", but on the other hand if everyone started paying paying by CC we'd pretty much go bankrupt.

The only cashless place I’ve seen around here is the major sports stadiums, everyone else seems to greatly prefer cash over cards.

However having the option not to is a very important privilege I feel we should protect.

Believe it or not we do have cash first businesses and I make it a point to use cash with them as they will only charge a fee if you use a credit card.

We need a stronger reason than "I want that" to force businesses to give us things — otherwise how do we decide whose preferences we should mandate?

The strong enough reason is "it's better for the people."

It's easy how we decide whose preferences we mandate - we mandate people's preferences, and businesses find ways to make money within those constraints. There's no issue making profit like this, so I'm not sure where the concern is. Profits slightly dented for a second? Oh well.

But personal preferences are a bad way to choose regulation — businesses can aggregate preferences much better than the state can.

One easy way to keep the homeless from coming in to make purchases is to refuse cash payments.

The government's job isn't to cater to business preferences it is to look out for the well-being of the people.

Businesses are also run by people. Everything is people. The difference here is the government wants to impose cost on businesses to solve problems it should be solving. It could solve them by issuing every homeless person with a credit card that gets topped up by X a month. It would rather just write a rule, take the credit, and have someone else pay all the costs.

Handling cash has been an accepted cost of business for over a century, but now it’s somehow an undue burden to continue doing so? Hogwash.

> It could solve them by issuing every homeless person with a credit card that gets topped up by X a month.

That sounds like a solution in search of a problem. Good luck at getting something like that implemented in the US.

Handling cash is a big cost. You have to store it, get it moved in and out, stop people stealing it, be insured against people stealing it, count it, make sure you have change available, etc etc. Yes people did it, and cash used to get stolen more.

More importantly, this isn't about the cost of cash. It's the mandatory of adding this cost in to businesses that don't want to pay all that money to handle money.

> That sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

It's a solution to a very specific problem: cashless shops.

Why should the government be responsible for building out an incredible infrastructure project so that some businesses don't have to worry about handling cash? Cash is not a new concept, we've been using it since the inception of the nation. Suddenly some businesses find a way to save a buck by not handling it, but this also happens to segregate a portion of Americans, but oh well that's not their fault, if the government doesn't like businesses doing segregation, the government can just become a bank? And issues cards?

Nah. In the USA if you want to do business you need to manage and handle cash. That's a perfectly reasonable expectation. Cost of doing business.

You also have to track your revenue and file taxes. That's perfectly reasonable as well, right? Or should the government be responsible for auditing every single company and managing their finances to determine how much tax is owed? I mean it would save the company money, right?

Your post is pretty poor tone-wise, but I'll address this. It's the exact opposite of what you're saying. If the government wants something, it should pay for it. Business is not imposing anything on the government. Business pays the government money it earns, and the government decides how much, and how long to lock the owner in a box for if they don't pay enough. Why should businesses be financially responsible for things the government is paid to solve?

Businesses are profit generating algorithms with singular purpose. They have no other concerns. Without governments, businesses would seek profit through horrifying means.

Humans make up businesses and governments. Governments can overreach very easily, as they have all the power. It is totally valid to point out when a government misuses that power against businesses, because businesses are just people, and people in governments shouldn't abuse other people with bad policies.

Therefore, it makes sense that we order our society such that businesses are subservient to governments, and governments priorities are first and foremost the needs of people, regardless of any additional cost to businesses.

It is pretty much only the civil defence authority that encourages use of cash, because they are aware of the incessant hacking attacks that could disrupt the system at any moment. Cash has become less convenient for consumers: businesses refusing to take cash made it even more so.

I do carry emergency cash with me, but it’s been in my wallet for 2 years now.

So many questions, with "how will you buy your coffee" very low in the order of priority. Electronic money remittance should be seen as a basic human right.

Seems like neither side really cares about these people, but they make a useful rhetorical prop.

Not sure whether Sweetgreen choosing to go cashless is an example of "decide things by who has the most money / power / guns."?

I think that "everyone else votes on whether I get to buy lunch" had more issues than just being inefficient.

This becomes a big issue as soon as all services in a specific niche do 'the thing', be it refusing cash or stuff like removing headphone jacks.

At that point, what are you gonna do? Stop using products from that niche altogether?

Ironically enough, I'd be okay with government regulations mandating a headphone jack in phones.

You don’t. The merchant you are buying from is choosing to pay 3% for credit card payments because they believe incentivizing people to pay with credit cards will result in them earning more (via higher prices or higher margin goods) than incentivizing them to pay with debit/cash.

If a merchant wanted to, it would be trivial for them to give you a 3% discount for paying with debit. In fact, Target gives you 5% off for paying with debit via their Redcard, but I suspect they do not advertise it because they still want their non savvy buyers to use credit cards. And they want to funnel their rewards seeking savvy buyers to the 5% discount since they bet the cost benefit for those people does not work out.

> You don’t. The merchant you are buying from is choosing to pay 3% for credit card payments because they believe incentivizing people to pay with credit cards will result in them earning more (via higher prices or higher margin goods) than incentivizing them to pay with debit/cash.

Today I picked up flooring from a place that gave a 5% discount for paying with cash or check. Many gas stations around here are around 3% less when paying with cash. At such places you pay extra for the convenience of the card.

Otherwise I think the incentive point is exactly right. My town allows you to pay for parking with a mobile app and CC. I’m sometimes charging a dollar total to the card for parking. Not much left for the town after the fees. But I always have my phone and can pay vs carrying cash or coins to pay.

My guess is the town makes more overall in parking fees because of that app

I don't believe that a merchant is allowed to do this? Probably very dependent on your deal with credit card processors but my understanding is that the default contract between a merchant and a credit card processor stipulates that you are not allowed to offer discounts to not use credit cards differently.

Of course if you are Target-sized, you get special treatment. My understanding is stuff like Redcard is basically just Target "giving back" their cut of processing fees...

A federal law was passed over 10 years ago allowing this.

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/new-rules-el...

> A PCN cannot stop you from offering your customers a discount or another incentive for using a certain method of payment, as long as you offer it to all your customers and disclose the offer clearly and conspicuously. For example, you can offer your customers a discount or a coupon if they pay with cash or a debit card rather than a credit card.

A class action lawsuit was filed, and the networks settled by allowing merchants to charge a fee only up to what they actually paid to process the charge if they inform the networks first. I gather most merchants don't inform the networks. And when they do charge surcharges, the fee they charge is obviously higher than the payment actually costs them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_v._American_Express_Co.

The FTC site is pretty clear, and they are the regulator.

I think this was in the past or no longer enforced. I lost count now of the stores that will charge you a 2-3% fee for paying with a card.

Debit cards exist and partially solve the inconvenience of holding cash. But, they're really inconvenient in other ways. As a consumer I'll prefer credit cards most of the time just for the security benefits. If there's a breach at a merchant and my number is stolen I don't have to worry about my checking account being screwed up for however long it takes to sort things out.

It'd be nice if we had another option for cashless payments. Particularly, one that doesn't impose such a large financial burden on everyone. Yeah, rewards are nice but they're disproportionately allocated as well. I think it's fairly evident going forward cash will be handled less and less. Credit card companies are the incumbents and path to least resistance to accepting cashless payments, but they don't need to be the only option.

With real competition I suspect we'll see those swipe fees suddenly decrease. Unfortunately, some of the bigger attempts at non-credit card payments (e.g., PayPal) charge commensurate fees. So, maybe I'm off and 3% is the minimum needed by the middlemen to stay afloat.

The point of the whole sub thread is that a merchant can always accept a credit card but still incentivize use of debit or cash by giving a discount.

> Debit cards exist and partially solve the inconvenience of holding cash. But, they're really inconvenient in other ways.

What inconveniences?

I was replying to the point made by the parent; it wasn't a meta comment for the whole thread. Most merchants aren't happily accepting a 3% surcharge because it's causing customers to spend more. While that happens and it's a big reason store-branded cards exist, I'd hazard to say most credit card transactions are for the same amount someone would pay with cash and the store just needs to eat the 3% because people don't like carrying cash.

>> Debit cards exist and partially solve the inconvenience of holding cash. But, they're really inconvenient in other ways. > What inconveniences?

I gave an example further down in that paragraph: "If there's a breach at a merchant and my number is stolen I don't have to worry about my checking account being screwed up for however long it takes to sort things out." It doesn't even need to be a security issue. There's been no shortage of incidents where a merchant double-charges, charges the wrong amount, doesn't release a hold in a timely manner, etc. where my cash is locked up with no recourse. To limit such impact, I have a daily spending limit set. That's helpful, up until I need to make a large ticket purchase. I'd love to see a debit card system that addresses these problems.

The merchants that do not offer lower debit prices choose to pay the extra 3%. It is up to the customer to decide if prices at merchant that gives debit discount or merchant that does not give debit discount are better.

> If a merchant wanted to, it would be trivial for them to give you a 3% discount for paying with debit.

It makes more sense to me for it to be a surcharge for using a credit card, but the last I knew the credit card companies disallow that in their agreements. Discounts get confusing and bump up against weird cases like minimum advertised pricing and potential taxation on the discount.

Debit cards can get a bit weird when they function as credit cards. A customer may use a debit card but swipe it as Visa or Mastercard and the fees the merchant pay will be different, setting up a constant source of frustration at the register.

I have never heard of this. Merchant gets the revenue, merchant pays the tax. If the debit price is $10, then the sales tax is on $10, and if the credit price is $13, then the sales tax is on $13.

> Debit cards can get a bit weird when they function as credit cards. A customer may use a debit card but swipe it as Visa or Mastercard and the fees the merchant pay will be different, setting up a constant source of frustration at the register.

Visa and Mastercard are payment card networks (PCN), they can perform both debit card and credit card transactions. If the card says debit on it, then it will be a debit card transaction with debit card fees. And no one should be swiping anymore, so I do not know what “swiping it as visa or Mastercard” means. It either says Visa or MC on the card, and that’s the PCN it’s going to use.

Debit cards are multi-branded. STAR is a popular debit network. Running a transaction over a debit network is far cheaper; often the merchant only incurs a flat fee for the transaction, and most card terminals give the customer a choice.